Originally Posted by
First_Principal
If the above turns out to be fact, and in the absence of other reasonable circumstances that may have affected the PIC's decisions etc, then you may well be justified in your opinion.
However what I heard in the youtube link seemed to be based on hearsay, with a fair degree of political comment and meandering from the subject thrown in. To me if there were any facts amongst it they were difficult to extract and - at this point - unsubstantiated as to source and evidence.
Well, its clearly a fact that it was trailing smoke from the photos taken by a crew member of the VAC B-25 of the formation on its way to the show, which have been posted elsewhere, and were mentioned in that video...hence the 20+ minutes mentioned from the plots between that point and the point it ditched.
What isn't ;'fact' is what level of comms there was or wasn't between the various VAC aircraft in the formation or via ATC until the point the show boss asked about the smoke system fitted, and even then, the PIC still continued with the 'show'......(and the inference of the PIC having a 'show must go on' mentality is based on previous incident when same pilot ended up having to do a wheels up landing, after u/c issues but at least he did the show before crash landing!)